The Revit Clinic

Getting help

The other day Jason Hickey from Being Civil posted a great post on getting help from Autodesk by creating a subscription support request.  I highly recommend the post as many of the items are good for any product you need help on, not just Civil 3D. 

Tips On How To Get a More Speedy Resolution To Your Service Request

It is important to know that the more information you can provide about a problem, the easier and faster it is for us to help. 

Oh - and check out the post below on a software called Jing.  It's a video capture tool you can use to actual show what is happening instead of trying to describe it.  I use it all the time and it helps greatly to explain any complex workflow or describe a partical way you need to select something to do a task (like I could have used it for showing how to alter an array).

Here is Justin's post: Jing Video Capture – Good for me. Good for you.

Thanks to Justin and Jason for letting me reference their work!

Goo addiction

As a christmas present to ourselves, my wife and I got a Nintendo Wii.  I have not tried to make a Wii white board yet, but it is on my list of things to do.  I am now addicated to a game called  World of Goo and I wanted to share it with all of you.  It is something I highly recommend you check out.  There are Windows and Mac versions available for download if you don't have a Wii. 

World of Goo  is a physics based puzzle/construction game.  You build structures with different types of goo in order to collect other goo balls into some sort of collector.  Sometimes you have to build over holes or spikes or set some types of goo on fire.  It speaks to the architect or structural engineer in me for sure.  It is frustrating and fun at the same time.  I spent about a half hour the other night just trying to see how tall of a tower I could build with all the extra goo I had collected from the levels.  

World of Goo Trailer 2 Director's Cut
by 2dboy

The 2 Mile Barrier

Elements in Revit never display their “Revit” coordinates to a user. This normally does not become an issue because we have shared coordinates to make sure projects match up and we can use coordinates from a site DWG file with Shared Coordinates for example, but sometimes things in a model can get a little messy because Revit doesn't tell you where you are modeling. 

The problem is that Revit does not like elements that are further than 2 miles from Revit's Origin.  When you start modeling farther away (or just putting DWG files or anything that far away), Revit will begin to have problems with display issues, dimension values appearing incorrect, and other operations.  Crashes can even be caused by having a model beyond two miles from Revit's origin.

The cause of this problem is more complex than I can explain with my mathematical skills, but for a good overview on the topic (with a explanation on the math that makes this two mile limit) check out this AUGI thread on Revit Origin and Shared Coordinates.

It is very difficult to move a model once it is starting to get far along, so it is just best if you can avoid this problem all together.

The important thing to remember here is to not model anything 2 miles away from the Revit Origin.  But, how do you find the Revit Origin so you know where you are? 

The origin in Revit is near the center of the space made by the elevation symbols in the default template. 
If you want to be sure, the easiest method is to import a DWG file that contains a circle or X at AutoCAD's 0,0 and make sure to select the option origin-to-origin while importing the DWG file.  This will show you exactly where the Revit origin is located (center of the circle or x).  Here is a AutoCAD file with a symbol at the origin:  Download Revit Origin DWG

If you draw a circle that has a radius of 5280 feet (1 mile) around this point, now you know Revit's limit. 

You should always start your building near the center of those elevation symbols in default template.  It is pretty easy to get more than 2 miles away from the origin.  Just zooming out 13 times, scrolling over once and starting to model and you will be too far away from the origin.

Spot Elevations don't find the floor

Have you ever tired to place a spot elevation on a floor but you could only seem to place one on the edge of the floor and all you got in the middle of the floor was the  symbol?

This has a pretty simple fix, but its not always totally clear why.  You will need to make sure that on the View control bar that the Model graphics style is set to Hidden and not to Wireframe. 

If you happen to be in a wireframe view, there is not a top face of the floor for the spot elevation to detect, thus the  symbol shows up.

Alter an Array

I got an interesting question the other day that I wanted to share. 

When you select an array in Revit the Options bar displays a check box for ”Append to End”.  What does this do?

Append to End allows you to change how elements are added or removed from an array.  When you first create an array in Revit, the option bar gives you an option to choose to move to:  2nd or last.

 

This determines whether or not Revit will attempt to place the number of items in the array between the two positions you chose while making the array (Last) or if Revit will keep adding elements to the array on the end based on the distance between the two elements that you place during its creation (2nd). 

Append to End allows you to switch this behavior after you have created the array.  If the Append to End check box is checked, this means that elements added to the array will be added to the end of the array based on the current distance between the elements.  If the check box is unchecked, Revit will space all the elements in the array equally between the first and last object. 

A little hint:

In order to see the Append to End check box you need to first select a element in a Array, and then selected the line that displays that defines the array.  Selecting the number that appears above the line will allow you to change the number of items, but selecting the line itself will allow you to change the Append To End setting on the options bar. 

Visibility Parameters for Images

Earlier I wrote about how to link visibility parameters within families and using If/then statements in Visible/Invisible. Well, what if you wanted to be able to control the visibility of an image in Revit? (So that you can control whether it was shown or not on a title block perhaps). 

Ryan Duell, one of our Product Support Specialists, helped to answer this question...   

The only way to gain visibility control of an image is to place the image in a generic annotation family, and then nest that family into another generic annotation family as a Symbol and then insert that into your title block family.

It is important that in both generic annotation families, that you make sure that under the settings pull down menu, Family Category and Parameters, to check “Shared”.  This will allow the parameters in the symbol family to be shared when it is nested into the other generic annotation family and again in a title block family. 

Once you have the generic annotation family created and nested into the other generic annotation family, you can create a parameter in that family for the visibility of the nested family and link it to the parameter on the generic annotation family that contains the image.  At this point you can load it into your title block and create similar parameters to link so that you can actually control the visibility of the image when it is in a project.

It is a good idea to draw invisible lines in the generic annotation family that contains the image as this will make the image easier to select in the family. 

I’d also recommend setting all the visibility parameters to be instance parameters so that you can turn off each instance separately.    This process works pretty well to control the visibility of images contained in title blocks.  You can load the final family into the title blocks (as many as you want) and then create parameters within the title blocks to control each image. 

I wouldn’t recommend this process for inserting images into other types of views within Revit.  This is because these images are contained in generic annotation families, which scale as if they are annotation based on the scale of the view, meaning you could get some images that are way too small or too large.

Temporary Dimension Size

Have you ever wanted to change the size of temporary dimensions in Revit? Maybe they just look too small.  There isn't a setting within Revit that can control this, but there is a change you can make outside of Revit that can change the size of these dimensions. 

First, close Revit.  Navigate using Windows Explorer to the Revit program folder in the installation directory for your product.  For Revit Architecture that would be C:\Program Files\Revit Architecture 2009\Program.  Find the Revit.ini file located in this directory and open it in Notepad.

Locate the [Graphics] section of the file and add just the second line below or at the very end of the file add all of the following:

[Graphics]
TempDimFontSizeInPoints = X 

Where X represents the size the text.  The default value for the size of temporary dimensions in Revit is 8, so try and experiment with different values to see what looks right for you. 

Thanks to Ryan Duell, Autodesk Product Support, for helping with this post!

Welcome to blogging Being Civil

My counter part for Civil 3D has started a Blog along with two other members of Product Support called Being Civil.  It looks like Brian Kling, Jason Hickey, and Justin Ziemba are off to a great start.

They will be helping out Civil 3D users by providing answers to those common questions out there. According to their Blog:

There are many great blogs out there on Autodesk's Civil Engineering products.  This one will focus on providing value to everyday users based on the thousands of Support Requests we receive every month from around the globe.  Chances are, if we notice several users asking a question, others will benefit from an answer.  We'll also provide deeper explanations of some issues normally provided in Technical Support documentation.  Of couse timely notification of releases and updates is always helpful, and we will shake things up with occasional interviews, polls, etc.

I'm sure that they will bring some great insights into questions that many users face and provide a lot of valuable assistance.  I encourage all of you take look at their entry into the blog world.  Perhaps I might even call upon their experience to help with some Revit to Civil 3D workflow issues...  

Roofing it

I am back from the holidays and ready to start blogging again  It was a good break, but I am ready to get back into it.

This week I participated in a web cast for Ask Amy on best practices for roof creation in Revit Architecture. 

This is always an interesting topic as there are many different types of roof conditions that exist and often the question gets asked “How to I do … (this particular condition) in Revit?””  In Support, this means often getting data files and attempting to figure out the best method to get the proper results.  When answering questions during a webcast, it’s a little tricker (no files!). 

One question that came up during the web cast a lot was how to create a roof where one portion of the roof was at a different height that others and still have the lower portion of the roof extend though to the perpendicular wall.

This is accomplished by thinking of the roof that is higher as a roof dormer.  This roof is actually created as two separate roofs.  The lower portion is created first and then the upper portion.  Then you use the Join/Unjoin Roof Tool. 

You use the Opening tool to cut a dormer opening into the lower roof.   Basically, this same process is used to create any roof dormer.

I’ve create a video showing the entire process.  Check it out here. 

I’d be very interested to hear from you interesting roof conditions you have had to model and how you went about it.